Subtitles and Transcript

Catherine Bracy

0:11
I'm going to talk about hackers.And the image that comes to your mindwhen I say that word is probably notof Benjamin Franklin,but I'm going to explain to you why it should be.

0:22
The image that comes to your mindis probably more likely of a pasty kidsitting in a basement doing something mischievous,or of a shady criminal who is
trying to steal your identity,or of an international roguewith a political agenda.And mainstream culture has kind of fed this ideathat hackers are people that we should be afraid of.

0:48
But like most things in technologyand the technology world,hacking has equal power for good as it has for evil.For every hacker that's trying to steal your identitythere's one that's building a toolthat will help you find your
loved ones after a disasteror to monitor environmental qualityafter an oil spill.Hacking is really just any amateur innovationon an existing system,and it is a deeply democratic activity.It's about critical thinking.It's about questioning existing ways of doing things.It's the idea that if you see a
problem, you work to fix it,and not just complain about it.And in many ways, hacking is what built America.Betsy Ross was a hacker.The Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack.And from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs,hacking has always been at the foundationof American democracy.

1:43
So if there's one thing I want
to leave you here with today,it's that the next time you
think about who a hacker is,you think not of this guybut of this guy, Benjamin Franklin,who was one of the greatest hackers of all time.He was one of America's most prolific inventors,though he famously never filed a patent,because he thought that all human knowledgeshould be freely available.He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod,and of course there was his collaborationon the invention of American democracy.

2:17
And in Code For America, we really try to embodythe spirit of Ben Franklin.He was a tinkerer and a statesmanwhose conception of citizenshipwas always predicated on action.He believed that government could be builtby the people,and we call those people civic hackers.

2:37
So it's no wonder that the valuesthat underly a healthy democracy,like collaboration and empowermentand participation and enterprise,are the same values that underly the Internet.And so it's no surprise that many hackersare turning their attention to
the problem of government.

2:56
But before I give you a few examplesof what civic hacking looks like,I want to make clear that you don't haveto be a programmer to be a civic hacker.You just have to believe that you can bringa 21st-century tool set to bearon the problems that government faces.And we hear all the time from our communityof civic hackers at Code for Americathat they didn't understand
how much nontechnical workactually went into civic hacking projects.So keep that in mind.All of you are potential civic hackers.

3:25
So what does civic hacking look like?Our team last year in Honolulu,which in this case was three full-time fellowswho were doing a year of public service,were asked by the city to rebuild the website.And it's a massive thing of
tens of thousands of pageswhich just wasn't going to be possiblein the few months that they had.So instead, they decided to build a parallel sitethat better conformed to how citizens actuallywant to interact with information on a city website.They're looking for answers to questions,and they want to take action when they're done,which is really hard to do from a sitethat looks like this.So our team built Honolulu Answers,which is a super-simple search interfacewhere you enter a search term or a questionand get back plain language answersthat drive a user towards action.Now the site itself was easy enough to build,but the team was faced with the challengeof how they populate all of the content.It would have taken the three of thema very long time,especially given that none of
them are actually from Honolulu.And so they did something that's really radical,when you think about how governmentis used to working.They asked citizens to write the content.So you've heard of a hack-a-thon.They held a write-a-thon,where on one Saturday afternoon --("What do I do about wild pigs
being a nuisance?") (Laughter) —Wild pigs are a huge problem
in Honolulu, apparently.In one Saturday afternoon,they were able to populate most of the contentfor most of the frequently asked questions,but more importantly than that,they created a new way for citizens
to participate in their government.

5:00
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of itself,but it gets more awesome.On the National Day of Civic Hackingthis past June in Oakland, where I live,the Code For America team in Oaklandtook the open source code base of Honolulu Answersand turned it into Oakland Answers,and again we held a write-a-thonwhere we took the most frequently asked questionsand had citizens write the answers to them,and I got into the act.I authored this answer, and a few others.And I'm trying to this day to articulatethe sense of empowerment and responsibilitythat I feel for the place that I livebased simply on this small act of participation.And by stitching together my small actwith the thousands of other
small acts of participationthat we're enabling through civic hacking,we think we can reenergize citizenshipand restore trust in government.

5:58
At this point, you may be wonderingwhat city officials think of all this.They actually love it.As most of you guys know, cities are being askedevery day to do more with less,and they're always looking for innovative solutionsto entrenched problems.So when you give citizens a way to participatebeyond attending a town hall meeting,cities can actually capturethe capacity in their communitiesto do the business of government.

6:25
Now I don't want to leave the impressionthat civic hacking is just an American phenomenon.It's happening across the globe,and one of my favorite examplesis from Mexico City, where earlier this year,the Mexico House of Representativesentered into a contract with
a software development firmto build an app that legislators would useto track bills.So this was just for the handful of legislatorsin the House.And the contract was a two-year contractfor 9.3 million dollars.Now a lot of people were really angry about this,especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollarswas an absolutely outrageous amount of moneyfor what was a very simple app.But instead of taking to the streets,they issued a challenge.They asked programmers in Mexicoto build something better and cheaper,and they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars --10,000 times cheaperthan the government contract,and they gave the entrants 10 days.And in those 10 days,they submitted 173 apps,five of which were presented to Congressand are still in the app store today.And because of this action,that contract was vacated,and now this has sparked a movement in Mexico Citywhich is home to one of our partners,Code for Mexico City.

7:49
And so what you see in all three of these places,in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City,are the elements that are
at the core of civic hacking.It's citizens who saw things
that could be working betterand they decided to fix them,and through that work, they're creatinga 21st-century ecosystem of participation.They're creating a whole new set of waysfor citizens to be involved,besides voting or signing a petition or protesting.They can actually build government.

8:20
So back to our friend Ben Franklin,who, one of his lesser-known accomplishmentswas that in 1736 he foundedthe first volunteer firefighting
company in Philadelphia,called a brigade.And it's because he and his friends noticedthat the city was having trouble keeping upwith all the fires that were happening in the city,so in true civic hacker fashion,they built a solution.

8:46
And we have our own brigades at Code for Americaworking on the projects that I've just described,and we want to ask youto follow in Ben Franklin's footstepsand come join us.We have 31 brigades in the U.S.We are pleased to announce todaythat we're opening up the
brigade to international citiesfor the first time,starting with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland.You can find out if there's a brigade where you liveat brigade.codeforamerica.org,and if there's not a brigade
where you live, we will help you.We've created a tool kit which also livesat brigade.codeforamerica.org,and we will support you along the way.Our goal is to create a global
network of civic hackerswho are innovating on the existing systemin order to build tools that will solveentrenched problems,that will support local government,and that will empower citizens.